Yet another second-rate contemporary book drove me back to cowboy books from a century ago. What's going on with modern writers (besides the fact that proper grammar, as it was taught up into the 1960s, if not beyond, seems no longer to matter to writers, who were at one time, presumably, English majors)?

This was fun, albeit a bit different. A young woman, Valaria Peyson, known as Val, comes out to Hope, Montana to marry her sweetheart of three years, Manley Fleetwood (Man). He's changed, although she wouldn't have know it from his letters. It turns out he's become a drunk and doesn't work all that hard on his ranch. When Val arrives at the train station, he's not around. She is met by a somewhat diffident "cowboy", Kent Burnett, who takes her to the local hotel and drops her immediately. Burnett then heads to the local saloon. She thinks he's gone off drinking, but in reality, he's gone to sober up the prospective husband.

Well, things go on. Eventually, Man gets his comeuppance and Burnett is revealed to be a good person and worthy of someone of the likes of Val. Something like that.
( )

After a courtship by letter, and thinking she knew what she was getting into, Val Peyson travels from back east to Hope, Montana, to marry Manley Fleetwood and live on his ranch. She soon learns that things are not as they seem, but it takes her the better part of two years to admit to herself, much less anyone else, that she's made a mistake. Published in 1912, Lonesome Land has some parallels with B.M. (Bertha Muzzy) Bower's own life. According to the book notes, "She was decades ahead of her time in taking on the subjects of divorce and spouse abuse."
While I liked this book, I thought the dialogue was somewhat stilted, and Val herself was not always a very likable character. Part of that, I think, was an attempt to have her grow and change from the uppity lady to a more sympathetic character by book's end. It sometimes comes across a quaint, but this is a very readable book that is true to its place and time. ( )